Editorial: Government gradually becoming less opaque

2013-03-19 15:36:06

Transparent government is essential to democracy. "Transparency is such a wonderful word," James Mayer told us; he's the executive director of California Forward, a reform group that just released a new report, "The State of Transparency in California in 2013."

"It's not about knocking on a door. It's about looking through a window," he said.

Despite the federal Freedom of Information Act and the California Public Records Act, journalists and other citizens frequently have been frustrated in attempts to get government documents to see what's going on. Usually, forms have to be filled out and delivered to a government bureaucrat, then copying costs must be paid. The information could be about budgets and salaries; agency policies and implementation; and records of meetings.

Mr. Mayer's metaphor is excellent: Instead of people having to knock on a government door – sometimes pounding on it for days – the information should be readily available on the Internet. "This report really is emblematic about a bigger conversation," he said. "It's turning around the relation of government to the people, who had to ask for the information. The new paradigm is that government has an obligation to keep it open, keep it available. Now, it's hide-and-seek. It's trying to find a needle in a haystack. The public should be engaged."

For the 2013 report, California Forward found some decent progress in transparency in California. "Voters experienced the first dividends of citizen-drawn legislative districts, and robust new tools were launched to track compensation of public employees," the report found.

A good example of this transparency is the website of Orange County government, ocgov.com. On the front page, listed under the "Popular" heading, is "Employment Compensation & Employment Contracts." Clicking there leads to documents of the compensation of county employees. That's a big improvement from the old method, where we went to the county offices in Santa Ana to pick up a large spreadsheet.

The report continued, "At the other end of the spectrum, the scandal at the California Department of Parks and Recreation brought the entire state financial reporting structure under scrutiny." And it noted that state Controller John Chiang is busy putting more of his department's data online, in particular, information on the compensation of state and local officials.

More can be done. The report decried something we have written about many times: the "gut and amend" process in the California Legislature, in which a bill's contents are replaced, sometimes completely, in the waning days of a legislative session, with citizens – and even the legislators themselves – having little or no notice or time to read the new wording before a vote is taken. We favor a reform that, for example, would require that a bill must be printed and put online at least three days before it is put to a vote.

All in all, California, the state that still dominates the U.S. Internet industry, is moving in the direction of putting online more of the information that citizens, after all, have paid for. The veils of secrecy all need to be pulled aside.

We favor requiring that a bill must be printed and put online at least three days before it is put to a vote in the Legislature.